A Pause for Beauty:
An Artist’s Journal
The Juice of A Life
Have faith in your passion, in the juice of your life.
Don’t lose that. The song within, that’s where your power is.
Live in your power.
Create out of your power.
A.J. Verdelle, author of The Good Negress:
I love that James Baldwin quote you cited. during your talk: "You don't get the book you want. You get the book you get." You spoke about finding the passionate author of a piece.
Yes. Where's the juice? What's good? What is my favorite thing? Having looked this over again and knowing that this is now some sort of story, in whatever shape it's in, what part of it would I not relinquish in any way? This is why my story kept changing, I think.
So I wrote the whole thing about Margarete, and it was not good. it was not what I wanted. And I didn't know what I was going to do. I had wasted, in my
mind, a lot of time. So that was tough. But I kept going.
Just because you observe something doesn't make it deep. The deep thing is the story that is still waiting for my attention. So until I figured out what to do, I had to keep working…
We want to look for where the passion is in the work, because that is going to be the anchor, that is going to be the basis of the mountain that is built.
- A.J. Verdelle interviewed by Nancy
Middleton in Glimmer Train (Fall 1998)
Where's the juice? Where is the passion in the creative work, whether it be art or music or a novel? If you could only retain one thing, what one element of this work would you not give up? Where is the essence?
What we're craving is that juice. Where the power comes from. That's what we want, to see, or read, or listen to. And learn from.
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